Office printers and facsimile machines have evolved which are used in a relatively free or open office environment. The output from such office machines may be generated at various remote locations and may be designated for a number of different recipients. Frequently, there is a need for confidentiality of the material received in one or more of the trays, but, typically, the material in the receivers or sorters for the output of such office machines is deposited in un-sorted or, if sorted or separated as between different documents, in clear view of the entire office staff and anyone has access to any document so deposited. Particularly, this is a security problem when the documents are received during non-working hours when the printer or facsimile may be generating output over night, say, from networked computers or facsimile senders anywhere in the world.
The security of documents is especially useful with sorters which are useful as random access sorters or mailboxes, such as the typical sorters employing deflectors, including moving nips, or gates to deposit sheets in a selected tray, as shown for exmaples, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,235,435 and 4,691,914 issued to Lawrence.